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vernacular.[257] Ulbrich of Rappoldstein kept two scribes engaged for
five years in transcribing the Parsival, and the cost of the work
amounted to £200.
It is apparent from the preceding sketch that the development of
literature and the circulation of books during the Middle Ages were
considerable, notwithstanding the serious difficulties there were to
contend with during the ten centuries between the fall of the Roman
Empire of the West and the time of the invention of printing.
Under the “Peace of the World” secured by the imperial rule, there
had come to be an active literary production and a development of
literary interests throughout the community which called for a wide
distribution and a general use of books. There was available for the
use of publishers a great list of accepted classics, Greek and Latin,
and there were also various epochs during which there came into
existence works by contemporary writers of distinctive importance,
many of which have been preserved as classics for future
generations.
The publishers of this period had a convenient and inexpensive
material to use for the making of books, and they had available for
book production the labour of skilled and inexpensive scribes,—
chiefly slaves. The well established means of communication
throughout the Empire enabled the publishers of Rome and Massilia
and other literary centres to keep open connections with cities in the
farthest districts of the realm, and there is adequate evidence of a
well organised trade in the distribution of books over almost the
entire civilised world, a trade which continued active until the latter
part of the fourth century.
With the fall of the Empire of the West and with the destruction of
so much of the civilised organisation and machinery which had been
dependent upon Roman rule, the book trade, or, at least, the trade
outside of Italy, practically disappeared. There remained, however,
with certain classes a knowledge of the classics and an interest in
their preservation, and there remained also in the monasteries the
knowledge and practice of writing and the collections of the works of
the early Church Fathers, the multiplication of which, for the use of
the increasing number of priests, called for continued labour on the
part of the clerical scribes.
When the work of writing came to be instituted, particularly in the
Benedictine Order, as a part of the regular routine of the life of a
properly ordered monastery, and when such work came to be
accepted as a part of the daily or weekly services rendered by the
monks, the preservation of the art of writing and the preservation of
the manuscripts, the existence of which depended upon this
continued knowledge, were assured.
For centuries after 476, such literary vitality as there was
depended practically upon these Benedictine monasteries. After the
tenth century, we find a wider literary interest throughout the
community, and in certain Courts and circles of nobility, literature
began to be accepted as fashionable, and an interest in literature to
be accepted as part of the proper outfit of a gentleman.
The second stage, therefore, in the development of the interest in
books which secured the multiplication of enough copies of many of
the older books to prevent them from passing out of existence, was
in the formation of the collections by princes and nobles, collections
which were, as we have noted, usually under the charge of clerical
scribes.
The third and more important stage of development came with the
recognition, on the part of the newly founded universities of Bologna,
Paris, Prague, Heidelberg, and Oxford, of the fact that the work of
higher education required the use of collections of books for the
reference of instructors and for the direct use of the students. With
the instituting in the universities of a class of scribes (stationarii,
librarii) recognised as university officials, a recognition which carried
with it certain privileges and protection, and which went far to offset
the hampering restrictions of university and ecclesiastical
supervision, the book production of Europe took a more assured
form.
The fourth step in the extension of literary interests was taken by
the towns-people, partly at the instance of priests who were
themselves sprung from the people, and partly under the influence of
students returning from university work to their native towns; and
collections of books were made for the use of the towns-people,
while libraries, originally planned only for the work of the monasteries
and for the use of clerics, were thrown open to students generally.
There appear to have been in the manuscript period and in the
earlier ages of printing a larger number of such town libraries and a
larger extent of literary interest among the citizen class in Germany
than in either France or England.
In Italy, the development of literary interests and of literary
production worked from an early date much more outside of church
organisations than was the case either in Germany or in France.
In such centres of literary activity as Florence, Milan, Padua,
Rome, and later, Venice, the production of the classics and the
multiplying of the books of the Italian writers themselves was carried
on at the instance and to a large extent with the money of the
wealthier citizens, citizens who in many cases held no official
positions whatever. The intellectual life of Italy was, however, from
an early date, very largely influenced by the thought and the learning
that came to it from the Greeks of Constantinople, an influence
which was increasing in importance for a quarter of a century before
the fall of the Greek Empire, and which, after 1453, was naturally still
more extended and emphasised by the large immigration of Greek
scholars flying from Turkish rule and bringing with them the literary
treasures of the East. It was this invasion of Greek thought and the
restoration of the knowledge of the poetry and philosophy of classic
Greece, which gave the immediate impetus to the great intellectual
movement known as the Renaissance.
As the Renaissance movement took hold of the imagination of
Italian scholars, it found ready for its use the new invention of
printing, and through the presses of Aldus and his associates, the
thought of the Old World, reshaped with the knowledge of the
fifteenth century, gave a fresh inspiration to the intellectual life of
Europe.
In Germany, where the Renaissance movement also influenced
the intellectual life of the time, a more important impetus to the
intellectual activity came with the work of the Reformation. The
printing-press made the teachings of Luther and his associates
available for the widest popular distribution, and the towns-people
and villagers who bought from the book peddlers the tracts
containing the vigorous statements of the Reformers, and who
bought also the answering arguments of the defenders of the Roman
Church, were not merely wrestling with a religious or theological
issue, but were furthering the general education of the community
and were helping to lay the foundation of the book trade of the
future. From the earliest date of the printing-press, it was the case
that there was in Germany a larger distribution of books, printed in
the vernacular, among what one may call (for purposes of
classification) the lower orders of the community, than was the case
in either Italy, France, or Germany. The development of the relation
between literature and the community, which came after the
establishment of the new art of printing, belongs, however, to a later
chapter.
 CHAPTER III.
THE MAKING OF BOOKS IN THE EARLY UNIVERSITIES.

T HE first revival of the long slumbering trade in manuscripts took

place in Italy, the cradle of the universities. Although after the
breaking down of the old civilisation of the Western Empire, Italy had
suffered more through invasions and devastations than any other
country of Europe, it had nevertheless succeeded in preserving a
certain continuity of cultivation and some remnants of learning or
germs of intellectual life, from which germs there came again into
growth an intellectual development for Europe. For the purposes of
this study, I am concerned with the history of the early universities of
Europe only in connection with their relations to the production of
books. I propose, therefore, to give a brief description of the
organisation and the character of the book-trade that came into
existence in one or two of the representative university towns, with
some reference to the general influence of the first universities upon
the development and the distribution of literature.
As has been indicated in the introductory chapter, it is my
understanding that, with the beginning of the thirteenth century, the
responsibility for the preservation and the development of the
intellectual life of Europe, for the mental training of the increasing
proportion of the community which was conscious of intellectual
existence, and for the transmission to the existing generations of
what had been preserved of the thought and learning of the past,
was transferred from the monasteries and the ecclesiastical schools
to the newly organised universities.
This change meant among other things that the control and
direction of education no longer rested with the ecclesiastics, that the
class of scholars was no longer limited to the clerics, and that there
were other directions in which scholarly achievement was to be
sought than those heretofore marked out by the Church. I do not
mean to say that after the beginning of the thirteenth century, when
the schools of Bologna and Paris had developed into universities,
the Church consciously abandoned the control of education, a
control which had rested in its hands for eight centuries. The
representatives of the Church authority themselves took an
important part in bringing into existence not a few of the universities,
and in connection with the organisation of the theological Faculties
and in other ways, the popes and the bishops retained for a long
series of years an important and abiding influence over much of the
university work. Heretical doctrines, or what Rome believed to be
heretical doctrines, were taught not infrequently in university lecture-
rooms, but the authority on the part of the Church to interfere with
such teaching, and to secure the withdrawal of the license from the
lecturer, was continually claimed and was frequently enforced. The
fact remained, however, that the general direction and control of the
work of higher education rested no longer with ecclesiastics but with
laymen. Of the four great divisions of university instruction, Theology,
Philosophy (or Art), Law, and Medicine, the first remained of
necessity under the direction of the Church, while in the supervision
of the second the Church undertook to exercise an influence which
of necessity varied greatly from time to time according to the
institution and according also to the character of the particular popes
and bishops. The third and fourth Faculties were, however, entirely
independent of ecclesiastical influence, and the mere fact of the
existence outside of the Church of an important division of learning
and of a great body of scholars must have had a powerful effect on
the imagination of communities which had for so many generations
been accustomed to look to the Church as the source or as the
interpreter of all knowledge.
The principal authorities on the rise and the general history of the
earlier universities are Denifle, Laurie, Mullinger, and Compayré. The
titles of their several works, on which have in the main been based
such statements or conclusions as are expressed in the following
pages, are given in full in the bibliography. The details concerning
the work of the university scribes and the manuscript dealers are
chiefly derived from the works of Wattenbach and Kirchhoff.[258]
 It is to be noted that several centuries before the institution in
Christian Europe of the first of the universities, and at a time when,
outside of a few monastic scriptoria, the interest in literature in
Christian states was almost non-existent, in the countries which had
accepted the faith of Mahomet a system of higher education had
been effectively organised, and in connection with the intellectual
activity of the universities and libraries of Bagdad, Alexandria, Cairo,
and Cordova, there had been a very considerable production of
literature in the departments of jurisprudence, philosophy, and
science. In fact, the first knowledge that came to the Europe of the
Middle Ages concerning Greek thought and Greek literature was
brought to it through Arabian scholars, and it was by means of the
lecturers of Cordova that the doctrines of Aristotle were made known
to the philosophers of Paris. The list of the scholarly writers who
were associated during the eleventh and twelfth centuries with the
great Arabian schools is a long one, and the books produced by
them included not a few works which had an abiding influence on the
thought of Europe. I have, however, no information concerning the
methods employed for the manifolding and distribution of the books,
and a consideration of them does not properly find place in this
study. The names of Avicenna (d. 1027) and Averrhoes (d. 1198) will
be recognised as representative of the class of authors referred to,
the men who, by their translations of Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle,
and other Greek classics, recalled what Laurie calls the university life
of the Greeks.[259]
In explaining how the universities are to be distinguished from the
cathedral schools or the Benedictine schools out of which they were
developed, Laurie gives the following definition of the first
universities: “They were specialised schools, as opposed to the
schools of Arts, and they were open to all, without restriction, as
studia publica or generalia, as opposed to the more restricted
ecclesiastical schools, which were under a Rule.”[260]
For the older institutions, it is not practicable to fix with any
precision the date of their beginning, and no year can be named in
which they first exercised the functions of a university. The first
university that was formally founded was that of Prague, which dates
from April, 1348. Bologna, Paris, Padua, Oxford, and Cambridge
were not founded but grew, that is, were developed under special
influences out of pre-existing schools. The first European school
which, while never developing into a university, did do specialised
university work, was that of Salerno, which may be said to have
initiated for Europe systematised and scientific instruction in
medicine. Fons Medicinæ was the name given to it by Petrarch. The
school of Salerno has one special claim to commemoration in any
general sketch of the intellectual life of Europe. Its foundation and
early development were due to the famous Benedictine monastery of
Monte Cassino, the monastery which had been established by S.
Benedict (in 529), and the scriptorium in which was the creation of
Cassiodorus. Salerno, which was later affiliated with the University of
Naples, fills, therefore, the place of a connecting link between the
educational work of the old-time Benedictine scriptorium and the
scientific activities and intellectual life of the new university system of
Europe. Indeed, through that wonderful old man, Cassiodorus, at
once Greek, Roman, and Goth, statesman, author, and monk, the
chain of continuity is borne directly back to the classic world of
imperial Rome.
The study of letters in Monte Cassino had come to include
medicine, and the writings of Galen and Hippocrates were
transcribed in the scriptorium, and were later made the first text-
books in the medical school established by the monks at Salerno.
Charlemagne is said to have interested himself in the school and in
802 to have ordered certain Greek medical treatises to be translated
for its use from the Arabic into Latin.[261] The man who finally
developed the monks’ medical school (then known as the civitas
Hippocratica) into a great and specialised studium publicum was,
however, Constantine, a Carthaginian Christian. His work was done
between the years of 1065 and 1087, under the special favour and
patronage of Robert Guiscard, who was at that time ruler of Apulia.
In the time of Robert the school contained some women students,
probably the earliest in Europe. There are references also at this
period to several female writers on medical subjects. Salerno dates
as a privileged school from 1100. The University of Naples, with
which the medical college of Salerno was later affiliated, was
instituted by Frederick II. (the “Wonder of the World”) in 1224.
Notwithstanding the brilliancy of the Court of Frederick and the
feverish energy of the monarch himself, the literary work done in his
university was not of abiding importance, and it is Bologna which
serves as the type of the earlier universities of Europe, and which
divides with the University of Paris the honour of having served as a
general model for later foundations.
The University of Bologna lays claim to be the oldest in Europe.
According to one tradition it was founded by Charlemagne about
800, but the celebration in 1890 of its thousandth anniversary
indicates that its modern historians have contented themselves with
a somewhat later date. The jurist Irnerius, who gave instruction in
civil law in Bologna between 1100 and 1135, was able to do for the
school of law a very similar work to that done by Constantine a
century earlier for the school of medicine at Salerno, and under his
direction the school became a studium publicum or generale.
Bologna dates as a privileged studium from 1158, when the
Universitas secured a formal recognition from Frederick I. Tiraboschi
speaks of the university as having been in a flourishing condition as
early as the twelfth century, and in 1224, when the Emperor
Frederick II., in his zeal on behalf of his newly founded university at
Naples, undertook to suppress that of Bologna, the latter is reported
to have had no less than 10,000 students. Its great jurist of that time
was Azo or Azolinus. The edict was revoked in 1227, and the
schools of the university were, in fact, never closed. The University
of Padua dates from about 1215, and that of Vercelli (in Piedmont)
from 1228. In 1248, Innocent IV. established the University of
Piacenza, with privileges similar to those enjoyed by Paris and
Bologna. Pisa dates from about 1340, Florence from 1321, and
Pavia from 1362. Galeazzo Visconti secured for Pavia from Charles
IV. a charter with the privileges of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford.
Notwithstanding the competition of so many rival institutions, and the
special favour shown from time to time to certain of these by one
prince or another (as in the case of the Emperor Frederick to
Naples), Bologna not only retained its pre-eminence among the
universities of Italy, but secured for itself a great reputation
throughout Europe, attracting students of every nationality. In
Bologna, Padua, and Pavia special attention was given to
jurisprudence, while the school of Florence was noted for the liberal
remuneration granted to its instructors in rhetoric and in belles-
lettres. In this respect, however, Florence stood almost alone. The
instructors in literature, classed as Humanists, were obliged for the
most part to seek appreciation and remuneration not in the
universities, but at the Courts of the cultivated princes and in the
palaces of the more intellectual of the noblemen, and, fortunately for
the literary life of Italy, literature had, during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, a popularity and acceptance among princes and
nobles to an extent not known elsewhere in Europe.
While the university life of Italy dates from the close of the twelfth
century, it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that we
find any trace of regulations concerning the production and
distribution of manuscripts. It appears that for a term of perhaps a
quarter of a century there had been in Bologna and in the other older
university towns a certain amount of interest in the production, hiring,
and selling of manuscripts, a trade which had been carried on
without any supervision or restriction on the part of the university
authorities, and the same was the case with the work of the earlier
manuscript dealers in Paris.
The term stationarii, which first appears in Bologna in 1259 and in
Paris some years later, indicates at once a change in the method of
work of these university scribes as compared with previous writers
who had been ready to do work in one place or another as
opportunity offered. For a number of years there was, in connection
with this university work, practically no selling of books. The special
responsibility of the stationarii was to keep in stock a sufficient
number of authorised and verified transcripts or copies of the books
ordered or recommended in the educational courses of the
university, and to rent these to the students or to the instructors at
rates which were prescribed by university regulations. The stationarii
also took over the books of the students who died while in the
university, or of departing students, as in most of the universities it
was a misdemeanour to carry any books at all out of the university
town.
In Bologna, Padua, and probably other Italian universities, the
Jews were forbidden to carry on any trade in books. If, therefore,
Jews coming into a town had manuscripts which they wished to
dispose of, it was necessary for them to place these manuscripts in
the hands of the stationarii, and they would make sale of them on
commission. As before specified, however, the buyers of books in a
university town could purchase only the use of the books during their
sojourn in such town. On leaving the town, it was necessary that the
books should be placed again with the stationarii for sale to others
connected with the university. It is probable, however, that this
regulation applied only to the special list of text-books or reference
books authorised and prescribed by the university. A certain
Heinrichs of Kirchberg relates that on leaving Padua in 1256, he had
managed to bring away with him a considerable package of books.
He had accomplished this by hiding the books in a load of hay which
he took with him through the town gates without being
discovered.[262] In 1334, the university regulation was modified so
that after having secured the special permission of the authorities, a
student could take with him from the university books which he had
purchased.
Until the time when the manuscript traders were replaced by the
dealers in printed books, the most important function of the university
dealers was not in the sale, but in the hiring out of manuscripts, and
the term stationarius came from a very early date to be limited to the
functionary who, under the regulations of the university, provided, for
hire, the students, and in some cases the instructors, with the
material required for their work.
In order to facilitate the manifolding and prompt distribution of the
texts needed, and in order also to lessen for the students the cost of
securing these texts, the practice obtained from the beginning of
dividing the manuscripts into portions, to which portions were given
the name peciæ or petiæ—or in the Italian form, pezze. At first, the
extent of these divisions must have been more or less arbitrary, but
later, the number of pages or sheets to be contained in them was
made a matter of specific university regulation. According to the
regulation, the pecia was to contain sixteen columns, each with sixty-
two lines, and each line with thirty-two letters, and the material was
to be written on sheets comprising together a form, quaterne.
The pecia served as the unit of the calculation for the charge for
the rental. The older manuscripts had been written in a much larger
format than that found convenient for university work, and the above
specified form was now arrived at as, on the whole, best meeting the
requirements of the students and the convenience of the scribes.
For some years after the formal recognition by the university
statutes of the stationarii, the number of these was naturally limited,
a limitation which had a service for the university authorities in
facilitating the supervision considered important, and which was, of
course, of business value for the stationarii themselves. A certain
amount not only of scholarly knowledge but also of capital must have
been requisite on the part of the stationarii in order to bring together
for manifolding authentic codices or texts, and also to keep
themselves supplied with writing materials, which during the
thirteenth century continued to be costly. There is evidence that in
certain cases, particularly in Padua, a salary was paid from the
university chest to the stationarii, which was an admission on the
part of the university authorities that the prices prescribed for the rent
of the peciæ were not in themselves adequate to secure a living
income for the scribes.
The stationarii were occasionally known in the Italian universities
by the name of bedelli, or bidelli. The bedelli were originally
university officials, whose functions probably covered some such
disciplinary work as that which is to-day in the hands of the Oxford
proctors. The name suggests also the English term beadle, applied
to the English parish official who was charged with the duty of
keeping the peace, and I find that the lexicographers derive the word
beadle directly from the earlier term bedel, the name given to the
English university functionary who had to do with matters of
discipline and particularly with the direction of public functions,
processions, etc. The name is derived from pedum, a stick, the
allusion being probably to the baton or staff of office. The use in Italy
of the term bidellus for the scribes hiring out manuscripts, was
evidently due to the fact that the privileges of this business were in
certain cases given to the university officials, in addition, probably, to
their other duties.
The name of peciarii was sometimes applied to the officials whose
duty it was to supervise the work of the stationarii. In 1300, there is
reference to six peciarii in Bologna.
The earliest Italian reference to university scribes dates from 1228,
and concerns not the University of Bologna, but the smaller
institution of Vercelli in Piedmont. The Vercelli regulations order the
employment of two exemplatores, who were to be charged with the
duty of providing the texts required for the use of the instructors and
students in the Faculties of jurisprudence and theology. The prices to
be paid for these manuscripts were to be fixed by the rector of the
university. As this is the earliest regulation of which there is record
concerning bookselling in the universities, I think it worth while to cite
the text itself:
Item habebit Commune Vercellarum duos exemplatores, quibus
taliter providebit, quod eos scholares habere possint, qui habeant
exemplantia in utroque jure et in Theologia competentia et correcta
tam in textu quam in glossa; ita quod solutio fiat a scholaribus pro
exemplis secundum quod convenit, ad taxationem Rectoris.[263]
[The University of Vercelli shall also employ two exemplatores, for
whom suitable provision shall be made, so that they may be at the
service of the scholars who require manuscripts authoritative and
correct both as to the text and in the commentaries, either in the
department of law or in that of theology, and in return for the copies
(or for the use of the copies) received from the exemplatores, the
students shall pay a fitting price (or rental) to be fixed by the Rector
of the university.]
In similar fashion, the statutes of the University of Padua of the
year 1283 provide that two stationarii or bidelli should be employed,
one of whom should be at the service of the Faculty of jurisprudence,
and the other should serve those of arts and of medicine. The
theological Faculty was not instituted in Padua until much later. The
two bidelli drew salaries, the first of eight ducats per year, and the
second of two ducats, forty sols. They were charged with the duty of
keeping a supply of peciæ of the texts prescribed in the lists and of
placing these supplies at the disposal of the students and scholars
calling for the same. In the year 1420, the statutes of the High
School of Modena prescribed that the stationarius (there appears to
have been question of but one official for the entire institution) must
keep a supply of the texts of the Roman and Canonical law, the
summa notaria, the speculum, the Lectures of Cinus and of
Innocentius.
The stationarius was to charge for the rent of a pecia of the
prescribed texts four denarii, of the glossarii five denarii, and of other
texts six denarii. I do not find in the regulations any specification of
the term covered by this rental. The city was to assure the
stationarius of freedom from military service, and was to give him
“the yearly compensation of ten lire.”[264]
A reference by the Italian scholar Filelfo indicates that from this
university arrangement the term bidellus came to be applied to
scribes outside of university towns. Filelfo speaks of a librarius
publicus, “who, in the ordinary speech, is called bidellus.”
With the increase in the larger universities, such as Bologna and
Padua, of the number of students and instructors requiring literary
material, the practice gradually took shape of purchasing instead of
hiring the texts required, and the stationarii developed into librarii. In
its original signification, the term librarius stood for librarian; and as
late as the fourteenth century the French word librairie was used for
a library or a collection of books. It seems to have been only after the
introduction of printing that the use of the term librairie finally came
to be restricted in France to a collection of books held for sale, that is
to say, to a book-shop.
The book-dealers, who in the earlier years of the manuscript
period devoted themselves to keeping collections of manuscripts,
filled, in fact, rather the rôle of librarians than of booksellers. They
were ready to rent out their manuscripts for a consideration, or to
permit customers to consult the texts without taking them from the
shop. The practice of making from their original stock of texts
authenticated copies for general sale, was a matter of comparatively
slow development.
Bologna had become the most important school in Europe for the
study of Roman and Canonical law, and it was in Bologna that the
undertakings of the university bookseller first became important. The
booksellers were not only subject to the supervision of the university,
but were also brought under the regulations of the town, and the
town authorities undertook to prescribe prices as well for the renting
as for the selling of the manuscripts, and also to prescribe penalties
for the renting or selling of incorrect or incomplete texts.
The university regulations specified that there must be on the part
of the booksellers no modification of the text under which new
readings or glosses should be inserted to replace those accepted as
authoritative, and a penalty was attached to the selling or renting of
the texts in any other form than that in which they were prescribed by
the instructors of the Faculty to which the study belonged. In 1289,
the penalty for the contravention of this regulation, previously fixed at
ten lire, was raised to one hundred lire.[265]
A few years later, a university regulation specified that the
stationarii peciarum who undertook to rent out the authoritative texts,
must keep in stock sufficient supplies of 117 specified works. In the
year 1300, there were in the university six official stationarii, of whom
three were Italians and three, foreigners. They had to be appointed
each year, but it seems probable that when their work proved
satisfactory they were re-appointed from year to year.
The responsibility for the general supervision of the texts and for
their correctness and completeness rested with the bidellus
generalis. Any reader who should discover blemishes or omissions
in the peciæ was under obligation to report the same to the bidellus
generalis, and the stationarius who was responsible for the
preparation of the defective text was fined five solidos, one half of
the fine going to the university chest, one quarter to the bidellus, and
one quarter to the informant.
 The stationarii were ordered to post up in a conspicuous place in
their shops all the regulations having to do with their trade, in order
that all buyers could know what they were entitled to receive. They
were not at liberty to decline to rent to university members any peciæ
on the official list. On the other hand, if they rented out peciæ to
students who had been expelled or who were under suspension,
they were themselves liable to fine. The usual rental at this time, that
is to say, the beginning of the thirteenth century, was four denarii for
a quaterne (four sheets) and two denarii for a pecia. The denarius
was the equivalent of about ten cents.
The rental for works not on the official list was somewhat higher,
as these would not be called for so continuously and as the
preparation of supplies of the same must, therefore, be more of a
speculation. In renting manuscripts outside of Bologna (which could
be done only under special permission of the university authorities
and which occurred as a rule only with members of other
universities) an additional two denarii for a quaterne could be
demanded. Students renting the peciæ were obliged to deposit a
pledge of sufficient value to secure the stationarii against loss.
Between the regulations applying to the stationarii peciarum, and
those controlling the general stationarii, who had authority to sell as
well as to rent and whose business lay outside of the university,
there were various differences. The general stationarius appeared to
have undertaken from time to time the sale of books on commission,
which to the university stationarius was forbidden.
One of the earlier university regulations prohibited students from
purchasing manuscripts with a view of selling them again for a profit,
but this, according to Savigny, fell into disuse in the course of the
fourteenth century. As late as 1334, the regulations of Bologna
strictly prohibited students from taking with them, on leaving the
universities, any books whatsoever, without a special authorisation
on the part of the heads of their respective Faculties. Regulations of
this kind naturally interfered with the normal development of the book
trade in a city so largely dependent upon its university as was
Bologna, and formed one cause for the greater activity of the general
book trade in cities like Venice, where the regulations of the
commune were not supplemented by those of university authorities.
The city statutes of Bologna of 1259, prohibited the stationarii
librarii from taking a higher commission on the sale of manuscripts
than two and a half per cent. It was also specified that no sale of a
work left on commission should be made without the direct
knowledge of the owner. The stationarius peciarum belonged at the
outset to the membership of the university, and, in accepting the
authority of its supervision and its regulations, enjoyed also the
university privileges, which included freedom from certain municipal
obligations. Many of the university stationarii belonged, as
mentioned, to the class of bidelli.
It was forbidden for any member of the university to promise or to
engage, either directly or indirectly, to pay to the stationarius a higher
commission or compensation than that prescribed in the regulations.
The penalty for an infraction of this rule, a penalty imposed upon
both the parties concerned, was a fine of five livres. The student was
also under obligations to denounce to the rector any attempt on the
part of the dealer to secure an additional compensation.[266] The
very severity of these prohibitions gives indication of difficulty in
securing enforcement of the system.
The statutes of Padua and of the other Italian universities of the
manuscript trade, were similar to, and were probably in the main
based upon, those of Bologna. In Padua, the earliest regulations
which have been preserved bear date as late as 1465, which is one
year later than the introduction into Italy of the printing-press. The
regulations of 1465 prescribed the size of the peciæ and confirmed
the rental prices to the schedule of those of Bologna. The renting of
manuscripts could, however, have continued but for a short period
after the issue of these regulations. In Padua, as in Bologna, the
stationarii peciarum had to make a deposit, in entering upon their
business, of four hundred lire. They had also to go through with an
examination at the hands of the university authorities, and they then
had to take an oath of loyalty to the university. This entitled them to
their formal appointment, which needed, however, as stated, to be
confirmed from year to year.
 In Padua, as in Bologna, there were fixed commissions for the
sale of manuscripts, and these commissions, in themselves quite
moderate, were to be paid half by the buyer and half by the seller. It
appears, however, that the prices were probably not fully controlled
by these regulations, as there are examples of so-called “presents”
being given by buyers to the sellers after the sale of manuscripts on
the commission basis specified in the regulations had been duly
recorded.
In Padua, as in Bologna, it was strictly forbidden for Jews to take
any part in the buying and selling of manuscripts. The only way in
which a Jew could secure a manuscript desired by him was through
the intervention of the university authorities, who might make
purchase of the same on his behalf. The bidellus was the official
usually employed for the purpose. It may be assumed that some
additional commission was here required, and that the Jews had to
pay more dearly for their university texts than the Christians.
There does not appear to be record of the loaning of manuscripts
to students for their own transcribing, although in Paris this evidently
formed an important portion of the manuscript business. In Bologna,
as in Padua, the trade in bookbinding was directly associated with
that of manuscript selling, and the ligatori librorum carried on their
work in the shops of the librarii. In Bologna, the manuscripts were in
the main devoted to the subjects of the law and scholastic theology,
while in Padua the more important division was medicine.
The literary requirements, however, for doctors of law as for
doctors of medicine, must have been at best but moderate. Savigny
states that in the thirteenth century the collection of books belonging
to a doctor of the law in Bologna rarely comprised more than from
four to six volumes, and the medical collections were hardly as large.
It is with the beginning of the fifteenth century that there comes to be
a larger understanding of the relations of literature to education and
a material increase in the demand in the university towns for
supplies of books outside of the texts actually in use in the lecture
room.
 Compayré gives the following list of the books required in the
ordinary and in the extraordinary courses of law in Bologna, a list
which was, he says, practically the same at Montpellier: The several
works of the Corpus Juris of Justinian, comprising the Codex (which
dates from 529), the Digestum Vetus, the Infortiatum, the Digestum
Novum. These were identical with the three parts which the pupils of
Irnerius distinguished as the Pandects or Digest, the Institutes, the
Authenticum. To these sources of the Roman law were later added
the Constitutiones of Frederick I. and Frederick II., and in Montpellier
the Usus Feudorum, a collection of feudal laws.
The statutes of the universities fixed the time within which the
reading of the prescribed books must be completed. Professors were
obliged, in entering upon their duties, to take the following oath: “I
swear to read and to finish reading within the time fixed by the
statutes, the books or parts of books which have been assigned for
my lectures.” Severe penalties were inflicted on those whose
courses had not been completed within the required time.[267] There
ought, as a rule, to have been no difficulty in completing the task
assigned, for each Faculty had, as a rule, only a single work or at
most a single author assigned for its consideration. The Faculty of
Arts had Aristotle, that of Civil Law the Corpus Juris of Justinian, that
of Common Law the Decretals of Gratian. Compayré suggests that,
according to the maxim of Seneca, timeo hominem unius libri, the
Faculties of the Middle Ages might well have been awe-inspiring.
The list of the texts of the medical Faculties was, however,
somewhat more considerable. The course in Montpellier, where
medicine became still more important than law, followed in the main
that of Salerno. The first place was given to Hippocrates and Galen.
It is somewhat surprising that as late as 1250 the teachings of these
old-time practitioners (whose work was done respectively in the
fourth century b.c. and the second century a.d.) should still have
remained the chief authorities in medical science. Compayré refers
to them as the Aristotles of Medicine. In the program of the Faculty
of Paris of 1270, however, the names of Hippocrates and Galen do
not appear.
 With the two Greeks were associated the original works of
Constantine and his translations from Rhazes Hali-Abbas, Ysaac,
Avicenna, Johannicus, and other Arabic and Persian writers, and
finally the treatise of John of St. Amand, and of Nicholas of Salerno.
The Antidotarium, or Book of Antidotes, known also as the Book of
Medicaments, was for some centuries a work of standard reference
and of popular sale. The influence of the Arabs in the instructional
literature of medicine seems to have been almost as controlling as
that of the Greeks in philosophy and of the Romans in law.
Rabelais, who studied medicine in Montpellier between 1520 and
1530, is said to have been the first among the students who was
able to read his Greek authors in the original instead of in Latin
translations.[268] Rabelais found time while in college not only for
Greek and medicine, but for literature. The first part of the
Pantagruel was written before he had secured his final diploma.
By the middle of the thirteenth century, the number of the books
required for use in the university courses had increased to such an
extent that four catalogues were issued, one for each of the four
Faculties—Law, Medicine, Theology, and Arts. The lectures and the
instruction were given entirely in Latin, which was the only language
that could have been understood by all of the various nationalities
represented, or even by the representatives of the different Italian
dialects.
In Spain, the earliest university was that of Palencia, which was
founded in 1212. Salamanca, founded a few years later, soon
exceeded Palencia in importance, and, particularly in connection
with the work of its medical Faculty, secured for itself, before the
close of the thirteenth century, a repute throughout Europe.
Compayré is of opinion that the instruction given in Salamanca, not
only in medicine but in science generally and in philosophy, was very
largely influenced by the presence in the peninsula of Moorish
scholars. “The philosophy of Averrhoes and the medicine of
Avicenna exerted a manifest influence on the development of studies
at Salamanca.”[269] It seems probable, if this belief is well founded,
that the Arabian literature, produced and manifolded in Cordova,
found its way to Salamanca, and through Salamanca to Salerno,
Bologna, and Paris.
The formal constitution of the University of Paris dates from 1202.
Certain of its historians, however, claim for its first work as an
educational institution a much earlier date. Crévier, for instance,
says: “The University of Paris as a school goes back to Alcuin ...
Charlemagne was its founder.”[270] Charlemagne’s practical interest
in education has caused his name to be associated with the schools
of Tours, Aachen, Milan, Salerno, Bologna, and Paris. The most
recent writer on the subject, Compayré, is of opinion that this is an
exaggerated statement. He finds evidence of an unbroken
succession of Benedictine schools, such as those of Rheims, Tours,
Angers, Laon, Bec, and others, which had preserved a continuity of
educational work from the time of Charlemagne to that of Louis VIII.,
and which, under such leaders as Lanfranc (1005-1089), and S.
Anselm (1033-1109), had developed and maintained a high degree
of intellectual activity. He considers these to have constituted the
direct succession to the schools of the palace of Charlemagne, but
he fails to find in them the prototype of the university system. For
Compayré, the actual founder of the University of Paris was Abelard,
who died sixty years before the university secured its organisation. It
is his contention that it was Abelard who, by his learning, his
independence of thought, his eloquence, and his mastery over the
minds of men, is to be credited with the initiation of the great
movement from which was to proceed not only the University of
Paris, but the long series of universities for which Paris served as an
incentive and the type. It was Abelard, says Compayré, who, if not
first, at least with the most direct and far-reaching influence,
introduced dialectics into theology and reason into authority,
breaking away from the mere passive transmission of the beliefs and
timid dialectics accepted by the schools of theology, and thus making
possible the development of a true university spirit. “The method of
Abelard is the soul of scholastic philosophy,”[271] the philosophy
which, until the Renaissance, reigned supreme in the University of
Paris. Abelard’s method, says Père Denifle, is presented in the book
which during several centuries served as the text for theological
instruction, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and its influence is also
to be noted in that other noteworthy work which became the
authority for the schools of common law, the Decretals of Gratian.
Abelard may be called the first professor of superior instruction.
His work was certainly begun with éclat, for his classes are said to
have numbered at times no less than five thousand pupils. “First of
the French philosophers ... he may justly be considered as the
precursor of Ramus and Descartes, in other words, of the
Renaissance and of the modern spirit.”[272] Apart from this more far-
reaching influence, he was able to do for the school of Paris what the
jurist Irnerius was, during nearly the same years, accomplishing for
the school of Bologna, making possible, namely, its development into
the university. It was through the work done by Abelard that “the
theological school of Paris became the seminary of Christian
Europe.”[273] This influence continued through the succeeding
centuries in which Paris still remained the centre of theological
instruction, a result which necessarily had later an important effect in
shaping the character of the earlier issues of the Paris Press.
The term University is not a synonym of the university of science,
but simply of the university of teachers and students who composed
a group and who instituted association of studies. “In the language of
the Civil Law,” says Malden, “all corporations were called
Universitates, as forming one whole out of many individuals.”[274]
The organisation of the University of Paris, while differing in
certain important details from that of Bologna, was substantially
identical with the Italian institutions in respect to the privileges
conceded to instructors and students. In successive enactments or
crown edicts, the members of the universities of Paris, Montpellier,
and Poitiers were exempted, not only from the regular national taxes
and from the town dues (octroi), but also from special war taxes. In
1295, Philip the Fair decreed that under no pretext could the goods
of the members of the universities be taken or their revenues
attached.[275] The following statute of the University of Padua
represented fairly enough the status of students in all the universities
of France and of Italy: “Students must be considered as citizens in
what concerns the advantages, but not in that which constitutes the
burdens of citizens.” Under this same principle, members of the
universities were also exempt from military service.
The authorities of the University of Paris exercised a very direct
control from the outset over all the details of the business of making,
renting, and selling books. This authority became in Paris a matter of
much more immediate importance and abiding influence than in
Bologna. In the latter, as we have seen, the business of the book-
dealers was very closely limited to the production of the texts
immediately required for the work of the class-room. In Paris,
however, in the manuscript period, two and a half centuries before
the introduction of the printing-press, the book-trade of the university
had become in great measure the book-trade of the city. During a
large part of this time, moreover, Paris shared with Florence the
position of the centre of the intellectual activities of Europe. The
scribes and their masters who were manifolding manuscripts in the
Latin quarter, were not only supplying text-books to the students of
the university, but were preparing literature for the scholarly readers
of Paris, of France, and of Europe. The book-dealers of Paris
constituted, however, for several centuries, with a few exceptions, a
guild organised within the university. The members of this guild, the
libraires jurés, were members of the university, and the operations of
the guild were under the direct control of the university authorities.
This arrangement gave to the book-dealers material advantages in
the possession of university privileges and in the control of a
practical monopoly of the business of producing books. It involved,
however, certain corresponding disadvantages. University control
meant supervision, censorship, restriction, regulation of prices,
interference with trade facilities, and various hampering conditions
which delayed very seriously, both before and after the introduction
of printing, the development of the business of making and of
circulating books, and, as a result of this, placed not a few obstacles
in the way of the literary and the intellectual development of the
community. Chevillier says: “The book-trade of Paris owes its origin
to the university, by which, under the approval of the king, it was
organised into an association of masters. This association was, from
the outset, controlled directly by the university, from the authorities of
which it received its statutes and regulations, and by which the
master libraires were licensed, jurés.”[276]
“The reproduction of a work of scholarship (to which class
belonged of necessity the text-books prescribed for the work of the
university,)” remarks Delalain, “called for on the part of the scribe a
considerable measure of scholarly knowledge and also for a detailed
and careful supervision. It was held, therefore, by the university
authorities that the responsibility properly belonged to them to
supervise the series of operations by means of which these
university texts were prepared and were circulated. It was essential
that the completeness and the correctness of each copy should be
verified, and that these copies should be confided to trustworthy
persons for their sale or their hire, in order that there should be no
risk of inaccuracies in the texts themselves or of any unnecessary
enhancement of the cost to instructors or to students of their
purchase or their hire. On this ground, the university of Paris
asserted from the beginning of its history the right to control the
book-trade of the city, a contention which was confirmed and
maintained by all the kings of France after Philip Augustus.”[277]
The “book-trade” was held to include all the dealers and artisans
who were concerned with the production and distribution of
manuscripts; that is, the copyists and their employers, the binders,
the illuminators, the sellers of parchment, and, later, the
manufacturers of paper. While the control of the university was
exercised over the entire book-trade, the interest of the authorities
was naturally much keener in regard to the divisions having to do
with the production of books than in the work of the booksellers. The
matter of chief importance, in fact, according to the accepted theory,
the sole purpose for the existence of the book-trade, was to secure
for the members of the university a sufficient supply, at a fixed and
moderate charge, of correct and complete texts of the prescribed
works; while it was also essential to protect those members from the
contamination of heretical writings or of heretical comments on
books of accepted orthodoxy.
 A regulation of December, 1316, prescribes that no stationarius
shall employ a copyist until such employee shall have been duly
sworn before the university, or before the Rector and four
procureurs, to execute his functions faithfully, and, having been
accepted as a trustworthy scribe, shall have had his name inscribed
on the official register.
As a partial offset to the series of restrictions and limitations under
which was carried on the work of these early publishers, it is in order
to specify certain privileges and exemptions enjoyed by them as
members of the university. These included exemption from taxes;
exemption from service on the watch or on the city guard; and the
privilege of jurisdiction, commonly known as committimus. Under this
last, they were empowered in suits or cases, civil or personal, and
whether engaged as plaintiffs or defendants, to bring witnesses or
other principals before the Juges Conservateurs, functionaries
charged with the maintenance or protection of privileges.[278]
Issues concerning personal rights arising between the members of
the university were decided before the tribunal or court of the Rector.
Cases affecting realty, and all cases between the members and
outsiders, were tried before the Conservateurs des Priviléges, an
authority of necessity favourably disposed to the members of the
university. The ground assigned for this privilege was that instructors
and pupils, and those engaged in aiding their work (i. e. the makers
of books), should not be exposed to loss of valuable time by being
called away from their work to distant parts.[279] An edict of Philip
Augustus, in 1200, confirmed by S. Louis in 1229, and by Philip the
Fair in 1302, directed that the cases of university members be
brought before the Bishop of Paris. The university found
disadvantages in being under the jurisdiction of the Bishop (whose
censorship later proved particularly troublesome for the publishers),
and applications were made to replace the authority of the
ecclesiastical courts with that of the royal courts. In 1334, letters-
patent of Philip of Valois directed the provost of Paris, who was at
that time conservateur of the royal privileges, to take the university
under his special protection, and in 1341 the members of the
university were forbidden to enter proceedings before any other
authority. In 1361, under an edict of King John, the members of the
university were again declared exempt from taxes and assessments
of all kinds (portes, gabelles, impositions, aides, et subsides). The
repetition from reign to reign of certain edicts and regulations such
as the above does not imply that the earlier ones had been recalled,
but that they had to some extent fallen into desuetude, or that
attempts had been made to override them.
By letters-patent issued in 1369, Charles V. declared that all
dealers in books and makers of books required for the use of “our
scholars” should be exempt from all taxes, etc. The exemption
included binders, illuminators, parchment-makers, etc. It appears
that some abuses had crept in under this exemption, as in 1384 it
was ordered that no book-dealers should be freed from taxes if they
carried on for gain any other occupation.[280]
The policy of favouring the production and sale of books by freeing
the publishers and dealers from taxes and other burdens was
continued and even developed after the introduction of printing. The
kings, impressed with the possibilities of this great discovery,
recognised that it was for the interest of the realm to free books,
printed or written, not only from octroi or city duties, but from
customs or importation charges. Letters-patent of Henry II., dated
1553, read as follows: Avons ordonné et ordonnons lesdits livres,
escrits ou imprimez, reliez ou non reliez, estre et demeurer exempts
desdits droits de traicte foraine, Domaine forain et haut passage.[281]
This was a more liberal policy than at that time prevailed in Italy or in
England, or, in fact, than has as yet been accepted in the nineteenth
century by the United States. In order to obtain the advantage of
such exemption, the publishers had to secure from the Rector of the
university a passport or certificate for their packages.
One of the earlier regulations of the university affecting the book-
trade was that under which the supervision of the sale of parchment
was left in the hands of the Rector. This sale was usually authorised
only at the annual Lendit fair. The dealers, bringing their parchment,
exposed this for inspection. Before any other purchases were
permitted, the Rector selected the quantity needed for the university,
for which payment was made at a price fixed in advance. He then
received from the parchment-dealers, for the treasury of the
university, or for the special fund of the book guild, a gratuity which
amounted to from two thousand to three thousand francs.
In Paris, as in Bologna, during the whole of the thirteenth century
and the first portion of the fourteenth, the principal work of the
university book-dealers was not the selling but the renting of books.
The regulations concerning the division of manuscripts into chapters
or peciæ were, however, not carried out with the same precision in
Paris as in the Italian universities, nor was it practicable to exercise
in the larger city, or even within the confines of the Latin Quarter, as
close a supervision as in Bologna or Padua over the rates for renting
and over the stock of copies kept by the stationarii. The general
purpose of the regulations was, however, the same, and the routine
of renting prices and the general rate of commission on the books
sold were, as said, matters of university regulation. With a
community of students ranging in number from ten thousand to (in
the most prosperous days of the university) as high as thirty
thousand, the monopoly of supplying text-books, whether through
sale or through renting, must have constituted an important
business. It was not until some time after the introduction of printing
that the importance and prospect of profit of publishing done outside
of the university limits, and freed from a portion of the university
restrictions, came to be sufficient to make it worth while for certain of
the more enterprising of the printers to give up the trade in text-
books and their privileges as libraires jurés and to establish
themselves as independent dealers.
In the University of Paris we find in use in the twelfth century, in
addition to the terms librarii, stationarii, and petiarii, the term
mangones. The word mango originally designated a merchant or
dealer, but appears to have carried an implication of
untrustworthiness or slipperiness. It is satisfactory, therefore, to
understand that mangones very speedily went out of use as a name
for dealers in books.[282] The petiarii are not mentioned in the
statutes of the university, where they appear to be replaced by the
parcheminii.[283]
 Guérard interprets the term stationarius as standing first for a
scribe with a fixed location (un écrivain sédentaire), as opposed to a
copyist who was prepared to accept work in any place where it could
be secured. Later, the term was understood to designate a master
scribe who directed the work of a bureau of copyists; and still later,
the stationarius, sometimes then called stationarius librorum,
possessed a complete book-making establishment, where were
employed, in addition to the copyists, the illuminators, binders, and
other artisans. At this stage of his development, the stationarius has
become the equivalent of the printer-publisher of a later generation.
Guérard is inclined to limit the earlier use in Paris of the term
librarius to the keeper of a shop in which books were kept for sale,
but in which no book-production was carried on.[284] It is evident,
however, that in France, as in Italy, there was no very definite or
consistent use of the several terms, and that before the introduction
of printing, librarius and stationarius were applied almost indifferently
to dealers having to do either with the production or with the sale of
books. Chassant is authority for the statement that at the time of the
introduction of printing into France there were in the two cities of
Paris and Orleans more than ten thousand individual scribes or
copyists who gained their living with their pens.[285] It is not
surprising that the first printers, whose diabolical invention took the
bread away from these workers, had their lives threatened and their
work interrupted.
The letters-patent of Charles V., dated November 5, 1368, specify
fourteen libraires and eleven écrivains (employing stationarii) as at
that time registered in Paris. No one was admitted to the profession
of librarius or stationarius who was not a man of approved standing
and character, and who had not also given evidence of an adequate
and scholarly knowledge of manuscript interpretation and of the
subject to which he proposed to give attention. The examination was
made before the four chief publishers (les quatre grands libraires).
Having secured the approval of the board of publishers, the applicant
was obliged to secure also acceptance from the representatives of
the Rector, and to submit certain guarantees for the satisfactory
performance of his responsibilities. He was called upon to submit, for
himself and heirs, all his property as well as his person to the control
of the court of Paris as a pledge for the execution of his trust. As late
as 1618, in the reign of Charles IX., the master printers (i. e., printer-
publishers) were obliged to hold certificates from the Rector and the
university, to the effect that they were skilled in the art of printing,
and that they possessed full knowledge of Latin and of Greek.
The libraires jurés comprised two classes, the libraires grands
(officium magni librariatus), and the libraires petits (officium parvi
librariatus).[286] The immediate responsibility for the government of
the body rested with the four chief libraires (les quatre grands
libraires). It was they who fixed the prices for the sale or hire of
manuscripts, and who supervised the examination of manuscripts
with reference, first, as to their admission into the official list of the
university texts, and, secondly, as to the completeness and accuracy
of the particular parchment submitted. They also inspected the book-
shops and the workrooms of the copyists, and verified from time to
time the accuracy and the quality of the copies prepared from these
accepted texts; they passed upon the qualifications of applicants for
the position of libraire juré; and, finally, they exercised a general
supervision over the enforcement of all the university regulations
affecting the book-trade, and gave special attention to those
prohibiting any interference with this trade by an outside dealer, one
who was not a libraire juré. These four chief libraires were each
under a bond or “caution” for the amount of 200 livres. In addition to
the exemption from general taxes and guard duty conceded to all the
libraires jurés, these four enjoyed from time to time certain special
privileges. In October, 1418, by a regulation of Charles VI., the four
chief libraires are exempted by name from certain special duties on
wine, etc., which had been imposed for the purpose of securing
funds pour la recouvrance de nos Villes et Chastel de Monstreau ou
Faut-Yonne.[287] It was also necessary for him to find two
responsible bondsmen for an amount of not less than 100 livres
each.[288][289] In Bologna in 1400 the bond was also fixed at 200
livres, the equivalent of 5065 francs.[290]